


Every Move the Feeling Follows

by thepinupchemist



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alpha Steve Rogers, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Family, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mpreg, Omega Bucky Barnes, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Team as Family, a brief appearance of one (1) young avenger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 04:27:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21265052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepinupchemist/pseuds/thepinupchemist
Summary: After the Avengers win the battle against Thanos, everyone gets to go home. Steve and Bucky retire, get mated, and get surprised. They have a baby, and they get to start their lives again.





	Every Move the Feeling Follows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amethystkrystal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amethystkrystal/gifts).

**Soundtrack: Island of Doom – Agnes Obel**

_ **Every Move the Feeling Follows** _

Even after everything, they were still Brooklyn boys through and through.

So retirement took some adjustment.

They’d saved the world – again.

Steve passed on the shield. He grew the beard back in.

“Why the hell d’you get rid of it for anyway, Rogers?” Bucky complained in the aftermath of the battle with Thanos.

Steve had looked pained. “I don’t know. I was just feeling –”

“Dramatic. You were being dramatic.”

“Maybe!” Steve exclaimed, but he let his facial hair grow after that. He never could say no to his omega.

_His_ omega. Because finally, after they put the stones back where they belonged, he and Bucky mated. They all somehow made it out alive, and instead of having some fancy mating ceremony like the entire world expected them to, they went off the grid with the rest of the team for two hours to get mated in the backyard of a house in the woods.

A house that Bucky and Steve bought together, because they were through with being superheroes. Sam had the shield. The others had the upkeep of the world well in hand. They would have their little house in the middle of nowhere and sleep off the first thirty-odd (who really knew, anyway) years of their lives and eat food they made from Steve’s meticulously kept garden and Bucky’s hunting ventures.

They couldn’t leave everything behind, of course. PTSD didn’t work that way. Both Bucky and Steve had high-clearance therapists to tell them as much. They had to lean into the waves; they couldn’t block off the shit that haunted them. So Bucky kept some guns and all his knives. Steve didn’t have the shield, but he kept his Wakandan gauntlets. They might have been out of sight and mind of most people, but they knew how these things worked.

So they leaned into it.

Bucky hunted, Steve gardened, sometimes their friends visited, and they had mindblowing sex in every way they could think to have it. Bucky liked being off heat meds out here – he had the space and the freedom and his alpha to work through heat the way a heat should be handled, tucked together for days in a nest that they built together.

Mostly Steve built them – Bucky didn’t count the days, but he knew his heat was coming around when Steve started getting picky about where the blankets went in their living room, building up a massive structure of all the linens in the house, every pillow he could get his hands on, and the occasional towel or t-shirt. Steve loved sticking his flannels in the nests he made for Bucky.

Mid-winter, when the snow swirled around their remote house tucked against the side of a mountain, Steve was fussing with a chenille throw blanket on the living room rug, in front of the fire that Bucky built.

“You’re such a fucking alpha,” Bucky remarked. He didn’t look up from his book. He and Steve finally had time to work their way through the stack of good shit they missed while frozen and/or brainwashed. Steve tried to tackle anything somebody called a classic. Bucky went for the scifi and fantasy. That’s where the best material was anyway.

Steve aimed a glare at Bucky and simpered, “You should have a good nest. That’s all I’m saying.”

“They’re always good when you make them,” Bucky told him, and Steve blushed. God, that man did blush so pretty. Pink crept up his ears and disappeared beneath the collar of his t-shirt, all over that perfect chest that Bucky loved to put his mouth on since 1933.

And sure enough, Bucky’s heat came the next morning, when sunlight reflected off the thick blanket of bright white snow and bounced in through the windows. Bucky stepped out of a sunbeam, at first, overheated just enough that sweat began to bead at his temples and along his tailbone as he sleepily pawed at the coffee pot.

It wasn’t until the slick trickled out against the inside of his thigh that he registered what was happening.

“Aw fuck,” he said, because in about twenty minutes, he wouldn’t give a shit about coffee at all. What a waste.

Well, no, Steve would microwave day-old coffee and knock it back because he didn’t want to be wasteful.

Steve stuck his head into the kitchen, hair yet uncombed. “What’s wrong?”

Bucky waved his hand for Steve to come closer.

Steve scented, and his pupils dilated. He slid up behind Bucky, wrapped his arms around his middle, let his whole chest press to Bucky’s back, and stuck his nose directly into Bucky’s neck. Bucky sucked in a tiny inhale, and a little more slick that a trickle stuck his sweats to his skin. Steve’s alpha scent cranked up to a thousand when Bucky went into heat, all possessive and smoky, like sap and embers.

“How d’you want it?” Steve asked. He always did. They liked to fuck around and switch it up, because what else were you supposed to do when you were a hundred years old and retired? Bucky could open up his alpha and top him if he wanted to. They could screw on every piece of furniture. They could test out toys and weird positions from weird books if they were so inclined. And they were very inclined.

But Bucky wanted something classic today. If it ain’t broke, after all.

“Mm, let’s just do it face to face to start,” Bucky murmured. “I like when you’re all alpha on top of me.”

Steve scraped his teeth over the column of Bucky’s throat. He hummed, and Bucky felt his lips turn up into a smile on his neck. “I know you do,” and alpha pride – _smugness_, if you asked Bucky – leaked into the kitchen, coiling around them both in thick tendrils of scent.

With a powerful heft, Steve swept Bucky into his arms, and carried him, laughing, to the nest in the living room. He deposited him in the center of it, ordered, “Stay there,” and disappeared back into the kitchen. When he came back, he lined up two pitchers of water, a pile of protein bars, and a couple bottles of Gatorade.

Steve liked to attack heats with careful strategy. Whether that was an alpha thing or a Steve thing, Bucky couldn’t say, because Steve had always been his alpha. He’d always liked to prepare for every contingency.

Bucky pulled his knees up before Steve even asked, and let Steve shuck the sweatpants. Rather than throw them, Steve arranged the slightly-damp pants at the edge of the mattress, and the beginnings of heat-scent pooled in the blankets. Bucky’s breath caught in his throat. He got a real kick outta the way their scents tangled, how that alpha arousal went hand in hand with his own.

With gentle, knowing hands, Steve pulled the elastic out of Bucky’s hair and combed it out over the pillows. He loved playing with Bucky’s hair, especially during sex, and Bucky loved it just as much – the way Steve’s warm hands would stroke or scrape or clench, guiding Bucky to the places that he wanted him.

While Bucky guided the direction of his heats, Steve guided the direction of his ruts. There was a lot of manhandling involved.

In short order, Bucky’s t-shirt vanished, and so did Steve’s pajamas. They were naked in the sunlight, in a house that might have been a little chilly had the heat fever not begun to set in. Steve put his hands in Bucky’s hair and kissed him, certain and hard. Eager.

“Arm on or off?” Steve asked. He pressed his knuckles into Bucky’s shoulders, massaging, then rubbed his palms down Bucky’s chest. He thumbed over his nipples, and Bucky let out a small sound of approval.

Bucky chewed on his lower lip. “Let’s keep it on. I wanna hang onto those shoulders.”

“Damn it, Buck, you can’t just say shit like that. I’m gonna knot before we even start.”

“You’d think youda got your shit together after a hundred years.”

“You’re hilarious,” Steve dryly said, but circled Bucky’s wrists with those shovel-sized hands and guided Bucky’s grip to his shoulders.

While Bucky held on, Steve slid his palms further down. He liked to linger, liked to tease, sometimes. Bucky liked that just fine most times, but not during his heat. He dug his right heel into Steve’s side.

His alpha laughed. “I’m going, I’m going.”

Steve’s finger’s brushed against Bucky’s entrance, smearing slick.

“God, you’re already so wet,” Steve whispered.

Bucky moaned. He could feel the heat on the inside of his skull, now, fogging things up, making his blood beat harder in his veins.

“Yeah, well,” he said, with his last two brain cells, “I got this big handsome alpha to fill me up, now don’t I?”

Steve’s gaze went ever-darker as his fingers slid inside Bucky’s body, familiar and skilled. He could find that spot inside him in a heartbeat, and he did, strumming against it in an undulating press of his fingers.

Bucky’s legs quivered, and he asked, “Are you trying to make me come before you even get in me?”

“Sure am,” Steve said, unashamed. “I was thinking I wanna make you come as much as I can. Just for fun.”

They’d done it before, and hell, it had been amazing and exhausting all at once. Heat-addled Bucky wanted it immediately, and kicked Steve a second time with his heel. “Then get going,” he said, trying for authoritative, but landing closer to breathless.

Steve grinned, all teeth, and kept stroking inside Bucky in a relentless rhythm. He drew Bucky into a kiss, his lips wet and ready. Their tongues moved together, and it was filthy. Bucky groaned, his body soaring closer and closer to release, the heat driving him nuts, desperate to get Steve inside him at the same time as wanting Steve to never stop touching him – _right there. _

In a tremendous crash, Bucky’s first orgasm slammed into him. With it, the rest of his logical brain swept away, and everything was heat and need. His cock softened on his abdomen, and the come on his stomach cooled against his too-hot skin. He whimpered. His alpha, his perfect, smart, beautiful alpha, petted his hair and said, “Shh, it’s okay. I’ve got you. I’m gonna take care of you.”

He would. He would take care of Bucky, because that’s what he always did. He loved doing what his omega needed exactly as Bucky asked for it, because Steve was the best.

Panting, Bucky watched as Steve gripped the base of his reddened cock. The blunt head pressed against him, into him, and when Steve sheathed himself inside Bucky’s body, everything was alpha. The aroma, the limbs boxing him in, the fullness inside him, big and thick as Steve had always been, even when he was a skinny scrap of an alpha.

Bucky trembled in the wake of Steve consuming him. He scrabbled to hold onto Steve’s back, now damp with sweat. His hands bit into Steve’s skin, eliciting an alpha rumble of need.

Still, Steve didn’t move until Bucky told him, “Go.”

And then he withdrew and slammed into Bucky with all his strength, scooting Bucky several inches back in the nest. Bucky locked his legs around Steve’s waist and, as he promised he would, held onto those broad shoulders.

Thing was, Steve had always had moxie coming out his damn ears. Even when he was little, he fucked hard and fast, all tactical with that big brain of his. He learned to read Bucky’s body like a book, and Steve could probably rewrite Bucky’s book word for word, touch for touch – every chapter. He knew that Bucky liked to be tugged into a kiss with a firm grip in his hair. He knew to scrape his nail across Bucky’s nipples, and to lower his head and suck.

Steve wrapped his hand around Bucky’s sensitive cock. Bucky cried out as he stroked, coaxing it back to hardness. The combination of the steady slap of Steve’s body against his and the practiced clutch of his fist twisting up and down Bucky’s erection inspired a second orgasm. He clenched tight around Steve. Steve muffled the noise he made in Bucky’s neck.

He nuzzled Bucky there as he drove into his body, gentle where his hips were rough and relentless. He traced the mating bite there with the tip of his nose.

“Harder,” Bucky managed. “More, please. Moremoremore.”

“Can I flip you around?” Steve asked. He tugged Bucky’s earlobe into his mouth and nibbled.

“Y-Yeah,” Bucky agreed.

God bless supersoldier strength. Steve withdrew and heaved Bucky up and onto his stomach. He cupped Bucky’s stomach and pushed his ass in the air. The vulnerable position and cold air made Bucky squirm, and so Steve pinned him to the nest.

He knocked Bucky’s legs further apart, and drove back inside him again. As Bucky instructed, he went harder, moved quicker. Bucky melted under the ruthless pump of Steve’s body into his. Slick ran out to the insides of his thighs, even as Steve stretched him out and used him up and made Bucky his.

Oh fuck.

Bucky came again.

“Three,” Steve grunted into his ear. “Bet we can get at least one more out of you, seeing as you’re in heat and all.”

Bucky didn’t have enough brains to come up with a response other than moan a helpless _alpha_ into the carefully crafted blankets around him.

He didn’t know anything but heat and sensation. How Steve could hold on this long without knotting, Bucky didn’t know, but damn it, he needed that knot. “Please,” he begged again. “Knot me. I need it.”

“I know you do,” Steve soothed. He gripped Bucky’s hair again, doubled down into a punishing pace, and slowly, his knot began to swell, pushing out inside Bucky, filling him up so much he didn’t know how much more he could take.

When Steve cupped his cock again, Bucky whined. He kicked out into the nest, but Steve didn’t let up. He thumbed over the head of Bucky’s cock, flicked his fingers just-so.

His knot locked inside Bucky, and as the warm wet of Steve coming inside him filled his senses, he came too, just as Steve promised.

For a moment, they swayed in place – Steve pinning Bucky down with one hand, his other hand rolling Bucky’s spent cock in his fingers, locked together, alpha and omega.

Then, they slumped down in the nest.

“Jee-_zus_,” Bucky groaned.

“Yeah, shit,” agreed Steve.

They caught their breath. Steve petted Bucky’s head again, and Bucky nudged up into his palm like a cat. As soon as Steve got his bearings – Steve always got them first, heat or rut, the bastard – he scooted their bodies to the edge of the nest, where he’d put the water on the stone in front of the fireplace.

Awkwardly, he poured a glass, and made Bucky drink. He tore a protein bar into tiny chunks and fed it to him by hand, and Bucky went, wrung out and fuzzy. His body would kick back up into heat in another hour or two – it was nice to be fussed over in between waves.

The rest of the heat followed in Steve’s tactical precision – three days of bliss in the arms of his alpha, safe in his house, far away from the rest of the world.

It was a spectacular way to put an end to Bucky’s heats.

**

The heats wouldn’t end forever, of course, but when the time next month came around for Steve to start fucking around with blankets in the living room, the heat didn’t come. If Steve noticed anything, he didn’t say so. He carried on as usual, shoveling their driveway and splitting firewood and criticizing Bucky’s taste in books.

“I’m gonna run to the store,” Bucky announced one afternoon, going for casual. “You need anything that’s not on the list already?”

They went to the grocery store around once every two weeks – it was a hike down to the nearest town from their hideaway, and Bucky patiently waited for the scheduled trip, because he didn’t want to look suspicious, being all worried about his missing heat.

He could not be pregnant.

That was impossible.

He was certain that he’d been sterilized when they made him into the Winter Soldier, same as the Red Room had done to Natasha. Since he and Steve reunited, they’d been having unprotected sex. They hadn’t bothered trying for protection even once – they were both immune to any disease, so who cared?

Bucky never talked to Steve about the sterilization. He’d always gotten the sense that Steve knew anyway.

So what, pray tell, the fuck?

When he pulled their truck into the parking lot, he tried his best not to look shifty. The residents of the town knew that former Captain America and his mate, former Winter Solider, lived somewhere in the mountains that surrounded them. They stopped gawking after the first few appearances they put in to shop for supplies or grab a coffee at the hipstery place that Bucky liked.

Bucky had stuffed the grocery list in the pocket of his jeans, but before he bothered to look at it, he made a beeline for the _omega needs_ section of the grocery store. Indiscriminately, he tucked a pregnancy test under his arm.

He trained his body into something nonchalant and used the self checkout.

Then, he darted into the little omega’s room at the front of the store, dropped his pants, and did his business.

Bucky perched on the counter next to the sink while he waited. If he was in a family way, he’d have this piece of himself he thought he lost. He dreamed of a family, a long time ago. An entire century ago, he imagined that he and Steve would get mated and take up someplace in the suburbs. Two and a half kids, or whatever.

He’d put that dream long aside.

Bucky didn’t know what to do if he got it back.

How the hell was he supposed to raise a kid?

As he ruminated, the door slapped open, and a skinny twenty-something in a red grocery store apron barged in. He startled when he saw Bucky hunched on the countertop. To his credit, he took quick stock of the situation at hand – former assassin tucked in a grocery store bathroom, a pregnancy test clutched in his metal hand – and rolled with it, shrugging his shoulders.

Bucky squinted. “Hey, aren’t you one of the Young Av–”

“Nope,” he said, and held up his hands. “Unless you’re the Winter Soldier.”

The face clicked into place. “You’re Billy’s bro–”

“Nope,” he said.

“All right, fair,” Bucky agreed, and the kid that was Thomas Shepherd – though apparently not a Young Avenger, or his brother’s brother – flicked his gaze to the pregnancy test.

“Are congratulations in order, or…?”

Bucky flipped the test over in his hands. “What’s two lines mean?” he asked, eyeing the trash, where he’d stuffed the box.

“Means you got a supersoldier cookin’,” said Tommy, and kicked his way into the stall.

Well, hell.

Bucky tossed the test in the trash can, trying not to lose his entire shit, and pulled up the only people he could think to ask for advice.

**Two Assassins and One Bird**

**[12:02 PM] Bames Juchanan Barnes: **crisis

**[12:02 PM] Natasha GO OFF: **running out of conditioner is not a crisis

**[12:03 PM] Bames Juchanan Barnes: **no really crisis

**[12:04 PM] CAWptain America: **running out of bath bombs is not a crisis

**[12:04 PM] Bames Juchanan Barnes: **i’m gonna fucking kill you both

**[12:04 PM] Bames Juchanan Barnes: **I am actually almost out of bath bombs so hook me up nat

**[12:05 PM] Bames Juchanan Barnes: **but i’m serious though

**[12:05 PM] Bames Juchanan Barnes: **can’t even say it hang on

Bucky rummaged in the garbage to retrieve the stupid pee stick. He snapped a picture, and sent it without context.

**[12:06 PM] CAWptain America: **ha ha very funny

**[12:07 PM] Bames Juchanan Barnes: **NOT FUNNY HOW DO I TELL HIM

**[12:07 PM] Bames Juchanan Barnes: **I didn’t think I could procreate

**[12:08 PM] Bames Juchanan Barnes: **and obviously i’m keeping it it’s fucking mine

**[12:08 PM] Bames Juchanan Barnes: **hey steve, I didn’t think I could get pregnant and so we didn’t use protection ever, and now i’m pregnant

**[12:08 PM] Natasha GO OFF: **literally say exactly that

**[12:09 PM] Natasha GO OFF: **but holy shit

The toilet flushed, and not-a-Young-Avenger Tommy Shepherd zipped out to wash his hands. He cocked a brow and said, “Who are you panic texting?”

“How do you know I’m panic texting?”

“Been through a scare a time or two in my day,” Tommy answered.

“Captain America and Black Widow,” Bucky said to that.

“Yeah, good call. They’re definitely less fucky than you,” he replied. He pulled out a couple paper towels, dried his hands, and disappeared back out the door.

What a dick.

**[12:10 PM] CAWptain America: **nat’s the functional adult in the chat so. what she said

**[12:10 PM] CAWptain America: **oh shit i’m an uncle

**[12:11 PM] Natasha GO OFF: **you’re already an uncle biologically and team-ly

**[12:12 PM] CAWptain America: **yeah but I actually like steve the other ones don’t count

Bucky centered himself with a breath, and tried to remember everything his very expensive therapist had taught him about grounding and mindfulness. None of it surfaced in his mind. Instead, all that went off in his head were alarm sirens.

Numbly, he dropped off of the bathroom counter.

All at once, he remembered that he was in a grocery store restroom, and that he hadn’t even gone through the shopping list. Fine. That was fine. If he did the shopping, he’d be buying himself some time to practice what he’d say to Steve.

From a practicality standpoint, they weren’t bad off. SHIELD paid them a shitload of money, and they had military backpay coming out of their ears. Well, Steve did. The government ruled that Bucky didn’t count, which was shitty, but whatever. They had extra bedrooms in the house, for errant superheroes that needed a night or two off. One of those could be converted into a nursery, easy.

Holy shit, Bucky thought, as he stacked canned tomatoes and toilet paper in his shopping cart.

Holy shit.

He was pregnant.

**

Steve was a perceptive bastard.

The moment that Bucky walked in from the garage door laden with reusable bags, Steve shouted from across the house: “You smell worried! What happened?”

“Where the fuck are you?” Bucky called back.

“Studio!”

Bucky dumped the groceries on the kitchen table and powered up the stairs and into Steve’s studio. He was the Winter goddamned Soldier. He could do any job, including telling his mate that they were going to be parents.

Steve hunched over his easel, tongue stuck out between his teeth. He set it aside at the sight of Bucky and unfolded to his full height. He fussed, tucking Bucky’s hair back behind his ear to scent along his neck. He frowned.

“So,” drawled Bucky, “funny story. I’m pregnant.”

Steve’s face went through a series of emotions in the space of a second: brows drawing tight, lips parting, brows falling back apart and going up on his forehead, squinting, until his face finally settled at something that was almost a smile. Awed. He looked awed. The alpha scent that rolled off of him was all pride, some possession, and an undercurrent of disbelief.

“Really?” Steve managed. His hands began to move over Bucky’s body, looking him over as though to check for injuries. He scented all the while, nose moving over Bucky’s hair and neck. He paused with his nose tucked beneath Bucky’s jaw. “No fuckin’ kidding, Buck. I can smell it – just a little bit. Oh, man, you’re gonna smell amazing, I bet.”

“That’s it? I tell you I’m pregnant and it’s ‘you’re gonna smell amazing’?”

Steve snorted. His almost-smile shifted to a grin, then. His eyes crinkled at the corners, and he drew Bucky into a sweet kiss. Painfully sweet.

Bucky pushed him back and muttered, “Sappy asshole.”

“Yeah, but I’m your sappy asshole,” he replied. “We’re gonna be dads, Buck.”

“Fuck, I know. I don’t know how to be a dad.”

“I guess we’re about to find out, huh, pal?”

Bucky pulled him into a headlock.

**

A few things happened around the house after Bucky announced to Steve that he was pregnant, and after Steve announced it to everyone that would listen. He tweeted about it, for fuck’s sake. The man spent a solid chunk of his spare time arguing with racists on twitter – this was the first time he’d used it to talk about his personal life.

_I’M GONNA BE A DAD!!! _was all the tweet said, and Bucky tried to pretend the three exclamation points didn’t make him go all soft on the inside.

Steve cleared one of the guest rooms almost immediately. They obtained a nesting chair, and Steve sat patiently with Bucky while he agonized over it.

Natasha appeared, and dropped a pair of her leggings onto the nest.

Sam contributed a hoodie.

In short order, Avengers landed on Bucky’s doorstep with their own offerings. Tony lingered to talk Bucky’s ear off about bringing Morgan into the world, while Steve painted with Morgan at the kitchen table and Pepper put her feet up in front of the fire.

The further along that Bucky got, the more diligent Steve became. He bought Bucky fancy furniture and did not fidget with Bucky’s nest, so matter how much his hands twitched toward it. When Bucky invited Steve to join him in the pregnancy nest, Steve leapt into the nesting chair. He curled around Bucky’s back and put his hands on Bucky’s belly and regaled their unborn child with tales of their glory days, or whatever they were calling their superhero careers.

They found out that the baby would be a girl, and Steve painted a huge mural of outerspace on the walls of her nursery while Bucky hunkered down in the nesting chair. Swirling galaxies met exotic planets, and shooting stars streaked above their heads. It was perfect.

“Ey, Steve!” Bucky called from the chair, one day. He’d gotten to feeling like one of the planets Steve painted, round and heavy.

When Bucky called, these days, Steve was at his side after ‘ST’ and before ‘EVE.’ He checked Bucky over every time, sniffing and peering and resting his palms on the swell of Bucky’s stomach.

“What? What’s wrong? Is it the baby?”

“Jesus, Rogers, scale it back a bit,” Bucky complained. “I have an idea for a name.”

Steve spread out his arms. “Go on.”

“Get in here with me,” Bucky instructed.

In an instant, Steve tucked himself under Bucky’s arm, curling his legs into the nest.

“I was thinking Josie,” Bucky told him. “For your dad. Josephine. I know way back when we said we said we were gonna do Charlotte, but –”

They’d talked about it on the battlefield. The Howling Commandos teased them for it.

(“Rogers and Barnes are at it again,” Gabe would lament. “After the war, we’re gonna have four hundred babies, and they’ll all be perfect, the end.”

“Ah, shut up,” Bucky would call back. “Sue me for wanting a bright future.”

“Only bright future you got is that grenade comin’ at us,” Dum Dum snapped, and they swore, scattering as the blast kicked up mud.)

“Josie’s perfect,” Steve said. “She could be Josephine Charlotte Rogers-Barnes. Or Barnes-Rogers?”

“I’m doing all the heavy lifting. She’s definitely Barnes-Rogers.”

Bucky went into labor on a still September morning. Steve panicked, and Bucky talked him through all the baby books they’d collectively read over the course of the last nine months. Labor was going to be long, and they didn’t have to worry about running to the hospital yet.

Despite Bucky’s levelheadedness about it all, Steve still cajoled him into going to the hospital too soon. In the car ride over – the hospital was a solid forty minutes away from their hideaway – Bucky took a picture for Snapchat, layered the dog filter over it, and sent out a mass snap: _guess who’s going into labor lmaooo._

Steve’s phone dinged in the pocket of his jeans. He fixed a tired look on Bucky and said, “Did you just snapchat the team that you’re going into labor?”

“Maybe,” Bucky answered.

Steve sighed. He smelled like stressed alpha and Bucky wanted to punch him for it, but for Josie’s sake, he would refrain.

When the show really got going, Bucky white-knuckled it, clenched his jaw, and did his job. He’d been through worse pain for less reward, and when a doctor tucked Josephine Charlotte Barnes-Rogers into his arms, he only got a little teary-eyed.

Bucky scented her, and her nose twitched, scenting him back, even as a tiny pink thing with a scrunched face. Steve, the sap, looked at them both with wide, watery eyes.

“Do you want to hold her?” Bucky asked.

“God yes,” Steve answered, and Bucky transferred their daughter into Steve’s waiting arms.

“Bet you dollars to doughnuts she’s gonna have your bad attitude,” Bucky told him.

“Hey,” Steve said, but it wasn’t a protest. He said it softly, to Josie, who looked unfathomably tiny in Steve’s huge arms. She nuzzled into Steve’s pecs, and Bucky laughed.

“She thinks you’re gonna feed her,” he said. “Give her here, asshole.”

“That’s no way to talk in front of the baby.”

“We both know my ma’s mouth was three times as bad as mine and I turned out okay.”

“Relatively.”

“Hey!”

A nurse knocked on the frame of the door. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said, “but you, uh, have some visitors.”

Bucky cocked a brow. “Who?”

“The Avengers?”

Tony shoved past him, Morgan clinging to his neck. “See, that’s your cousin. Your cousin, uh – what’s her name?”

“Josie,” answered Bucky.

Steve backed up a couple steps, shoulders going up, all protective alpha.

Bucky cocked a brow at him. On God, Steve was one growl away from getting booted from the room.

Tony yapped, as he did, and their friends piled into the room, one after the other, until the entire hospital room was a mess of superheroes. Steve didn’t let any of them close until Sam pushed through the tangled knot of Avengers. Steve grinned, and Sam laid a hand on his shoulder.

“You did good, Rogers,” Sam said.

“Excuse me,” Bucky piped up from his bed. He was already healing right up – he felt bad for any omega that didn’t have the benefit of a healing factor. “I did all the hard work.”

Sam gave an exaggerated sigh and said, “I guess you did all right.”

“Fuck you, man,” Bucky said back.

“I said to watch your fuckin’ mouth in front of the baby,” scolded Steve.

Josie began to cry, and Bucky made grabby hands to get her back. When Steve settled her back into his arms, Bucky’s stomach settled. He felt his worry eke away looking at her perfect face. Whatever pheromone Bucky started giving off, the room fell silent. Calm and contentment flowed through him in a way that it never had before. Wonder curled up in his heart as she nosed at him to be fed.

“Damn, that’s one heckuva omega mind whammy,” Tony said.

“Shut up, Tony,” Natasha said back. “You’re stepping on the moment.”

And what a moment it was.

Steve slid his fingers through Bucky’s sweat-damp hair, his smoky alpha scent a steady presence, like a thrumming beat of the heart.

They’d taken a long time to get here. As teenagers they’d pictured the way as straightforward and clear of debris. Then the war happened, and everything else, and Bucky thought that he would never get to have the things that he dreamed of as some kid from Brooklyn.

To be honest, for a while after Steve broke his programming, Bucky assumed he’d be dead.

He wasn’t dead.

They’d come to a new place. It wasn’t an end, because God knew nothing would ever end the way that Bucky wanted or expected, but it was a damn good place to be.

And Bucky was gloriously alive.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a commission fic! If you're interested in one yourself, or you'd like to know more about what a disaster I am, you can follow & contact me on twitter @thepinupchemist. Thank you to amethystkrystal for indulging me and allowing a Young Avenger to show up lmaooo


End file.
